Abstract

The noise levels of impulsive sounds are subject to variation, mostly due to changes in the meteorological situation which have a strong influence on the noise propagation. For environmental noise assessment studies the variation in the single events levels as well as the long term (averaged) level should be considered. To calculate these one can use a number of variations for the atmospheric absorption and the excess attenuation, alongside with histograms of for instance the wind speed and wind directions. Just recently, a new approach has been enforced in the Netherlands to assess the sound from shooting ranges. Details on this calculation method will be given in which meteorological classes are used to account for varying wind speed and temperature gradients. This method makes it also possible to describe the distribution of occurring sound exposure levels around shooting ranges. The distribution of impulsive sounds is further illustrated with data obtained from projects carried out on: long range propagation of high-energy blasts, monitoring military training areas with detonations and muzzle blast noise, and monitoring fireworks in an urban area.